Solopress has embarked on £3.3 million plan to revamp its manufacturing base, a significant feature of which is the purchase of the first commercial HP PageWide Web Press T250 HD in the world.
The Southend-based company has partnered the press with a Hunkeler roll-to-cut/stack machine. This ‘vastly increases operational efficiency,’ converting from reels to cut sheet finished jobs at speeds upwards of 180m/min.
‘We started assessing the market for high speed continuous feed inkjet presses in October 2019, doing extensive due diligence to ensure that we made the right technology choice,’ said managing director Simon Cooper. ‘Despite many good products on the market we concluded that with the upgrade on the T series press, it was the best choice for our business.’
Despite the Coronavirus pandemic Solopress decided to forge ahead with its investment. ‘In the end, we were able to turn this period of suppressed demand to our advantage,’ Mr Cooper continued. ‘We took the opportunity to remove older equipment and move ahead with the installation of new technologies. With these investments we have fundamentally improved our business, making huge productivity gains!’
A second T250 machine is expected to be installed at Solopress in early 2021 and the company has also invested in a further two new HP Indigo 7800 machines, which join a pair of HP Indigo 10000s installed last year.
Onlineprinters Group, of which Solopress is a part, is partnering extensively with HP. In addition to the two new T250 machines for Solopress, Onlineprinters Germany will also be taking delivery of two new T250s and Scandinavian Print Group already has a T240 operational taking the tally to five T Series machines within the group as a whole.
Mr Cooper finished, ‘Our partnership with HP allows us to access industry leading technologies like high-speed digital inkjet, Indigo and the Siteflow system all from the same source. Our decision to forge ahead with inkjet makes us leaner and better equipped to head into the future.’
